


Fugue

by ninety6tears



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fantasy With A Touch Of Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2020-12-16 17:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21039758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninety6tears/pseuds/ninety6tears
Summary: A few months after Operation Vestal, Dublin is plagued with a series of brutal murders, while rumors and mysteries begin to fly around a certain former partner of Cassie's becoming psychologically unstable. After Rob Ryan can no longer speak for himself, Cassie just wants to figure out what happened to him, but her furtive investigation may take her to the center of a much older and bigger secret. And maybe she's beginning to lose her mind, but no one else seems to be noticing those strange animals appearing around town...





	1. Prologue

**fugue** [from Italian _fuga_, from Latin: a running away, flight]  
n.  
1\. A musical composition in which one or two themes are repeated or imitated by successively entering voices.  
2\. A dreamlike altered state of consciousness, lasting from a few hours to several days, during which a person loses his memory for his previous life and often wanders away from home.

"You know how after the rain you see all these dogs that seem lost, wandering around. The rain washes away all their scent, all their direction...They go to sleep thinking the world is one way and they wake up and somebody moved the furniture."  
\- Tom Waits

**( )**

When I was a kid I told the other kids there was something wild and wonderful far beyond the school yard, deep into the wooded arms where we liked to go long enough for it to feel like nowhere. We would look for a wolf that guarded its secrets on a map around its neck.

I claimed, in some child's simple language, that its eyes were wise and that it could speak to us without opening its mouth. But I couldn't put words to the menacing love it was that I imagined: I told them it had gleaming fangs like volcanic rock, but what I meant was that you would look at its teeth and think of your mother's firm hands keeping you out of the churning street; I imagined that the tang of an impossible healing broth was its blood. It wasn't as simple as a lie, because I knew its size and color so well, saying, "No, bigger than that, with its fur all matted." I think there was something in the other children that was drawn by this, and they never challenged the forever-lengthening tale. It was some nobility of my imagination that determined I was in charge, I was the one who made up the quest on the spot as we stuck through the wet grass and huddled low as if we were the only brave souls who had ever been between these trees.

This is the part I had almost forgotten: I never really wanted to be the leader. Sometimes instead of wrangling the others along I would venture out, on a day of solitude, with only myself and a book carried in a plastic backpack. These were not the days for my big black beast and the child's snickers drawn up behind me in a loyal beacon; but still, sometimes, I would hear a noise and look up for my wolf.

I would go to the lake and wash my fingers in the smooth cold, my reflection grey but clear in the water. Now and then there would be something about the slightest change of wind that made me believe for only a second that when I looked up, somebody would be looking right back at me from the other side, in something like the peaceful crossing of two gallant explorers meeting eyes across the sprawling water. A mirror of myself in someone else. We would be more alone with each other than we were apart, and fiercer for it. I thought that our clothes and things would grow older, transform into timeless sturdy hide garments hung with heavy tools. He would be on my arm, stitched into my instinct. A life for my life, and neither of us leading.

I never really believed in the wolf; I was too old for those things, but I think a part of me had faith, in the most reassuringly conditional logic, that the reason I never found the magic was because no one ever came to me with the map.


	2. Chapter 2

A clap of wind made a loud rattle at my window, the night outside just starting its keening into angry cold. I went to pull it shut, shivering a little and stooping into my thick colorless sweater on the way back to the futon.

Sam had made us a batch of coffee and nudged the mug he'd poured for me in my direction as I sat down with a readying stiff sigh. "I really don't think I'm going to be able to give you much," I said.

"Still," Sam said, because it wasn't the first time I'd said that, "it's easier to profile when there are multiple cases. I was hoping you could give it a shot, just between us, see if it gives me any ideas. Of whether it's all the same person or...But if you don't even want to look it over that closely, that's fine."

Of course I didn't like it; it wasn't for nothing I'd left the murder squad. But I was fingering out a cigarette and lighting it, and I closed my eyes, just to think for a bit. "It's just that as much as it seems impossible that it isn't all the same guy, the only consistency is that he's inconsistent. First of all—you already know this—there's no hint of a trend with the victims. Three females and two males, ages ranging from sixty-six to _sixteen_—"

"The youngest was fifteen," Sam corrected, his eyes as somber as they get. The reminder didn't matter but saying it mattered; I gave half a nod before I went on.

"And the condition of the bodies is...not the kind of thing you need me for, I mean, Jesus." I was laughing very humorlessly. "Strewn just a little ways into the woods, or off in the corner of a car park...No attempt whatsoever to hide them."

"Forensics hasn't turned up any signs that any of them were moved," Sam added. "He was just lucky enough not to be seen, every time."

"And this way he slashes them up. It's some kind of mental, but you want paranoia? Schizophrenia? If there's some reason in his head that these people are somehow a threat to him, we couldn't tell. Generally with that there's something more ritualistic; there's a big purpose in mind and killing the person is just a part of it, like if trophies were taken, or again, if the victims had enough in common for there to be some perceived enemy or grudge. What's being done to the bodies feels more like a calling card, _and-or_ what we both don't want to think about: He enjoys it, or it's an outlet for his anger or his boredom. This is a man we're thinking is insane, but in actuality he may just be a person who thinks he needs to be violent to keep from going insane. Cooper said the murders were done about as quickly as they could be—no abductions, and the damage to the bodies wasn't drawn out...?"

Sam was shifting, looking cold. He nodded.

"So...Assuming he's smart and in control, and if he isn't, he has been _ridiculously_ lucky...we're probably not looking at a power killer, right? Or at least_ these_ aren't his power killings. From what I'm looking at he doesn't enjoy instilling fear and feeling the control over somebody else. I wouldn't bet it bothers him, but it's not his favorite thing about it. It isn't the psychological but the physical experience of killing somebody that he likes, so I can't see him being very well-planned; he picks the time and place right so that he isn't caught, but it's more like figuring out how to get a drug fix. Nonspecific, not picky. Probably not keeping a nice little diary for you, or cryptically bragging about it either. And you know all the typical serial killer stuff if you've ever watched TV: It will probably be someone who at least showed destructive behavior during childhood, and I'd be shocked if he isn't openly violent and doesn't have any kind of record, but then, I'm shocked he hasn't been caught."

Sam was quiet while I paused to warm my hands around my coffee cup and take a sip. After a moment he muttered darkly, "You said it."

"Said it?"

"'Serial killer,'" he pointed out. "Dublin's first serial killer."

Though the label had been debatable, I was almost sure the lads at Murder had probably leapt right onto it after maybe the second body and then hushed down about the sensationalism when it came to the grimmer struggle up to the unsolved fifth case. Here and there in the records you'll find a double murderer who probably was planning on many more, but this was a new creature.

Sam had caught this case after the third, and it had only been a matter of time: by the time this guy got to another victim, and I wasn't hopeful that it wouldn't happen, over half the squad would be focusing on one or more of these cases with the type of nebulous frustrations I had only ever imagined when I was working, at most, a couple kills at once.

The news of this maniac had first cropped up less than a couple months after Operation Vestal, well before the fallout out of it could have even begun to leave me alone. I was never supposed to take for granted that my job couldn't start to get a lot harder at any given time, but I would have only left faster if I'd somehow seen this one coming. A part of me did superstitiously think I'd sensed, weeks and weeks ago in the darkening hall outside the interview rooms, that we'd somehow irreversibly started inviting in bigger horrors, but I hadn't imagined this clear and oncoming twist through the safety of daylight. I'd been waiting for the day the rumor mill was no longer interested in my last investigation, but now that all the things that had driven me out of Murder had been made a lot less relevant to the break room talk, it was disorienting to realize I'd even been standing on that wreckage just to stay afloat. I didn't need an excuse for the stammering and stumbling around, the late nights when I flinched awake with the shakes, but people would always get curious about why I'd left.

I pushed my food around while Sam ate very hungrily; I wondered if he'd had anything since his early lunch. After turning off the news we changed to safer subjects. I made a spirited enough recollection of my day of mostly running through paperwork and making acquaintances in Domestic Violence, and when that ran out we managed a calm silence. I could still hear the roaring wind over the faucet when I was rinsing off the dishes, and it dimmed out Sam's voice when he finally asked me something.

I came away from the kitchen, drying off my hands. "Hmm?"

Sam's face was carefully blank. "I asked you if you've heard about Rob."

I took a second to realize the seriousness in his expression, and my breathing went funny for a couple seconds. I tossed away the towel and crossed my arms. "What would I have heard?"

He actually hadn't been expecting this: he set down his mug, a little nervous. "He was reported missing. Last night, apparently."

"What?" There was a hard, wide-eyed moment. "Christ."

"Never showed up anywhere all of the weekend, apparently. Somebody at MP came in to talk to a few people in our department first thing this morning; it gets around fast, so. He can't have been off long."

It was Monday; I started to breathe fine again. "Who reported him missing?"

"The flatmate."

For a second, something about the idea of Heather being the first person who would notice Rob falling off the map made me so extremely sad that I forgot why I didn't give a shit. Then I uncrossed my arms, letting out an easy breath. "Okay, so he's fine. He's probably shacked up in some university girl's apartment and decided to blow everyone off, didn't think that anyone would notice he was gone."

Sam hesitated. "Does that really seem like something he would do?"

It seemed like it should have so obviously been the wrong thing to say and I had to bite back something mean. I reeled away to face my door for just a couple seconds, and Sam looked like he felt awful when I put my face back. "What makes you think I would know anymore?"

He took so long to speak, I started to feel guilty. "I'm sorry, I just...I thought someone should let you know. And I thought if you'd heard anything..."

"No," I said, making sure I sounded calm. I was sitting back down next to him. "...I don't know anything about what he's up to, not anymore."

I couldn't look at him for some reason, but he put his arm around me and I nodded my head into his shoulder. We sat like that for a while, and then he had to leave.

At my doorway he hugged me close, and kissed me on the forehead. That was all.

Sam and I were sort of seeing each other, I think. Most days it felt like a pact to keep from losing our minds and I had a hard time imagining anything beyond the comfort of that. He'd stayed the night only once, and I remember it was nice, but I think I must have acted a little off in the morning because he'd started tapping the brakes.

He was the main reason I was keeping close tabs on the murders. Generally I considered myself done with local homicide in every respect and I would have turned off the news and gotten to bed earlier if I didn't want to know why and when he would be coming over looking rough and exhausted.

I was on my way to drop the car off back at the office on that Thursday night—alone, since my DV partner lived only a few blocks away from our day's last stop—when I turned the radio up: There had been a sixth. The body had been found in an alley only a few blocks away from Dublin Castle. Depending on how long it had been there, this victim may have died at a high-traffic time of day; Sam might be on his way over to talk to Cooper just now.

I was only a few yards away from my last turn when I saw the girl. She was waiting to cross the street and pulling on a cigarette and I doubted she could be older than thirteen. Furrowing my brow, I muted the radio, hit the window button and pulled the car over. "Hey!"

The shout didn't give her the admonished type of start; she only pulled in on herself and squinted at me.

"Yeah, you. You walking home by yourself this late?"

She looked only mildly annoyed and gestured vaguely down the block before putting out the end of her cigarette under a rugged green welly. Her voice was quiet: "I live right up there."

I didn't buy for a second that she lived right up there. "There's some kind of psycho out there, you know. I'm police; let me give you a lift."

"Catch the guy, will you, so I can walk home without getting mammied?"

I didn't know whether to smile or roll my eyes. "It's just a ride. No hassle."

After a second she sighed and went to the passenger door.

I switched over to a music station while she was getting in; some smartarse was playing "Mack the Knife" on university radio and I reached to get a CD out of my bag. "I need you to put that out in here. Do your parents let you do that?"

She cracked open the window, took a last drag and then tossed out the stub. I could have been more scandalized; I was only fourteen when I started nabbing cigarettes from my uncle's coat pocket.

When the music spinned up, I was checking her seatbelt and noticed some kind of surprised smile on her face. I was looking a little more closely then: Her clothes were suitably young if playfully academic, and her hair was a bottle red, the type of barely-unnatural hue I did a couple times when I was a teenager, and it formed a short bob around a pale flat-featured face. I think it was the dyed hair that did it: the blond roots I was squinting to catch in the low stripes of light for some reason. "...Have we met?"

She gave me what may have been an uncomfortable chuckle. "I don't think so."

"I haven't worked on you about any homicides or wife beaters lately?" It was too adult, but I've always been better with kids when I know for sure they need the firm comfort or authority, not so much with knowing what to say for small talk. But all she did was let out a laugh; I'd broken the ice.

"No."

"You just looked familiar," I said with a shrug, turning us back into the street.

"It's a ways down; I'll let you know when's the turn."

"Sure."

We were quiet for a few blocks, and then she said, "I don't mind this one but it's no _Rain Dogs_."

I slowly cracked a smile. "You listen to a lot of Waits?"

"Some. This friend of mine's mad about him. Take a left up here, hon?"

That grown-up ease to her shoulders and even her smirks. For almost the rest of the ride I began to wonder if she could be one of those preternaturally youthful people that still passes for a preteen into their twenties; but she would have said something when I got on her about her parents and the cigarettes.

"Is Cassie for Cassandra? Sometimes it's Cashlin?"

I jumped a bit. "No, come on, we've met?"

"No, your name's on the label right there." She tapped on my binder that was sitting up on the dash.

"Oh, hah, get a grip, Maddox. It's Cassandra. What's your name?"

"I'm at the apartment right past the old bank." She paused. "My name's Ellie."

When I dropped her off at the narrow building, I almost waited to make sure I saw her go in, but the front stairs were mostly hidden by hedges. I sighed and decided to head back before one of the loudmouthed DV goons started speculating I'd gotten so spaced-out lately that I'd forgotten I didn't own the car.

Most of the time the flat below me still has a night light on so it's not pitch black out on the stairs, but that night I couldn't see a thing outside. I'd acquired a good enough sense memory of the steps that this shouldn't have felt so precarious, but my coordination had gone grimly slapstick ever since Operation Vestal and it only added to the aggravation that I felt the need to take the stairs twice as slowly that night.

A car toddled by down on the street, found the right turn and then accelerated off, leaving the neighborhood braced in quiet with nothing but the sound of trees scratching against the air.

And then it was a pinprick of instinct that made me stop: My key had just slid into the lock on my door, and I have no idea what made me so sure that it wasn't just a push of wind rather than somebody or something breathing, but I was suddenly and inexplicably aware that someone was just around the corner on the roof extension.

My whole body froze, and I said it quick as a last prayer: "Rob?"

A sly brush of silence, no reply, and then I was turning the key and bolting through my door and locking it shut behind me. I went straight for the gun I keep next to my bed and only then realized my hands were shaking, almost too much for me to load in the cartridge. Swallowing, I finally checked up the pistol and carried it over, flicked the switch to light up the roof side. I was about to check for visual outside the window when there was the unmistakable heavier noise of someone coming up the stairs to my flat; I crept back over, unlocked and opened the door, ready to clear around the stair landing.

When Sam came around into my threshold and walked right into me holding a gun I finally thought about what the hell I was doing. His face was stern with concern, and straight away I clicked the unload and took out the clip. "Shit," I said, trying to laugh. I backed inside, shaking my head.

"What happened?" he demanded, coming in and shutting the door behind him. I came closer to flick on the light and give him a kiss on his cold cheek.

"Everything's alright. I just thought there was somebody outside."

With the first close look at him something in me halted. Sam looked bad. Not just low after a hard day's work but wiped so blank that there was barely anything there other than colorless solemnity.

"I need to tell you something," he said.

"There was a number six. I know." I turned and headed to the pantry; Sam doesn't usually fix it with whisky, but he takes it from me because it's my one comfort habit that doesn't involve me having to make anything.

"No. I mean yeah, but I wasn't dealing with that today, I was..." I was still getting into the cupboard, slapping down the wobble on a glass that I'd nearly knocked over with my still quavering grip, and he made some small guttural noise that made me stop before he said, "Cassie, listen, I'm after making sure you hear this from me, would...Would you come over here?"

I finally followed into the sitting area, hands resting idly at my hips. Then I read something in his face and felt my legs go a bit numb.

I said, "Rob."

"They didn't find him, no," he put out his hand in small assurance. "We still have no idea where he is."

I watched his expression for a second and the realization dropped straight through me, throwing me off balance before I completely understood the shape of it. "'We.' What's he got to do with you?"

"...He's wanted for questioning." Sam's eyes were softer now, almost pitying. "He's a suspect, Cassie."

"A suspect...?" I stammered. "Sorry, for what?"

"Murder. _The_ murders."

When a sound finally managed to come out of my mouth, it was odd and cracked, like a deep giggle. "You're having me on. Why? _How_?"

Sam leaned forward to rest his elbows on his legs, sighing. "I spent a good amount of the day talking to a man named Ted Limerick. He's a psychiatrist Rob has apparently been seeing for a couple months, and I really shouldn't tell you the specifics, but from some things that Rob discussed with him shortly before he disappeared, Limerick decided he should come to us with what he knew."

Funny enough, my mind had snagged with astonishment on the fact that Rob had apparently gotten himself to a fucking therapist, more than any other part of the story. "Jesus. Where are my cigarettes?" I said grumpily, beginning to look through my apartment.

Sam put half of an effort into helping me look around, a small noise coming out of him like I was already dealing with this in a way he wouldn't have advised, finally continuing.

"Now, look. There's a part of this, and please don't, you know, bite my head off if you'd rather not be knowing, but..." Sam gave my regretful cringe a forgiving one; if he'd been the type to think like that, I would have bitterly considered guilt-tripping me into civility a smart card to play. "The more important thing that I need to tell you is that...Rob, he's been having some actual trouble lately. Psychological, like...I don't know if it was because he started to see it coming on that he started seeing this guy, Limerick makes it sound like it was just standard talk therapy until very recently, but..."

I'd found the unopened pack I had in one of the kitchen drawers, and finally sat down on the futon after lighting a smoke and looked at Sam, expectant.

"He started seeing a psychiatrist...about as soon as they let him come back to work, right around then. It wasn't until about a month in, he started saying that he'd been having some issues that he couldn't really explain. Like he was having night terrors that felt more like hallucinations, and he was...waking up in places and being unable to remember how he got there."

My mind was already driving clinically through this, using that calm hold. "Sleepwalking and all that can go along with other issues, sure."

"Yeah, but sleepwalking to the other edge of town? Losing whole days?"

My eyes clicked to his in astonishment, then fell away. "Fuck's sake, I mean, dissociative disorders are way beyond the pay grade I play at, and as far as I'd commit to knowing, that's all just thriller movie bollix." _Oh, very mysterious, Rob_, I was thinking, as if he were in the back of my head to hear the snipe. My mind insisted this was a joke.

Sam shook his head uncertainly. "Limerick had recommended if it continued that he try to go to some specialist and get a diagnosis, but then it was only a short time until..."

Rob was the stubborn type; it would have taken him months to roll over into admitting he needed some kind of medication. It was hard enough in the first place to see him pouring out his issues to a doctor, enough to make my thoughts stutter over some factor I had to be missing here. "So what are you telling me? This Limerick has some idea that Rob has an alternate personality that's been viciously killing people? And I guess I'm supposed to assume he's missing cause he's off doing a Tyler Durden somewhere?"

"No," Sam said. "No, Limerick didn't think that Rob was the murderer."

Even in Sam's quiet inflection I heard it, the oncoming weight of the point that was going to blow a crack right in the center of everything we were talking about.

"You understand? _Rob_ did."

I had to lean far back and slowly push my hair out of my face, breathing firmly and slowly. Then I looked back at Sam. "Isn't that a fucking laugh."

His jaw tightened a click. "Apparently he noticed a couple of his episodes lining up with when these people were killed, and, I don't know, he went to his psychiatrist to see if it was sound. And Limerick really wasn't sure what to do about it. He says he really didn't think he could possibly be right, he tried to calm him down about it and he was going to keep an eye on him. But then Rob up and disappears a couple days later, so he starts to get worried."

My whole body felt stiff as stone; I'd suddenly swerved into the opposite of shaky and easy to rattle. I stood up. "So here's the thing, Sam: You and I don't talk about Rob, I don't know half of what to think with Rob and I'm not sure I ever really did, but let's have a little talk, about Rob Ryan, just this once. He was a murder detective, for two years, and he didn't get used to it. Not in any of those wrong ways. He would not _kill_ somebody; I cannot imagine any reason on the face of the earth he would murder anyone because even if he _wanted _to? I know, and I think you might know this too, that if no other reason would stop him from doing it, it would be that he doesn't have the _nerve_, to do something like this."

Sam's lips were tight for a moment. "But."

He was so tensed up, I sighed and tried to softly urge, "What?"

"But if he really was...unable to control himself, if he was having enough trouble that he isn't even himself anymore..." Seeing my expression, he backed up a bit. "I'm not saying that I think he did it. I came here to sort this out, to tell you why I can't overlook it. You know I can't."

"You know, I'd say this...killer alter-ego that somebody's envisioning here doesn't exactly go over well. If it was to get brought up in court somebody could contest it fairly easily, and I wouldn't know if what's being suggested here is even possible. And it would definitely be pointed out as being a bit too convenient that someone with that kind of disorder could fit pretty much any profile. I mean, this shrink did the right thing bringing this to you lads, but I hope O'Kelly's hardly pushing all the force on looking for Rob. But speaking of that, why the hell are you the ones still handling this?"

"I did go to O'Kelly and talked to him; I said yeah, I worked with Rob, I don't like looking into it, but what do you do? He was one of ours, there isn't a single person on the squad who's going to be able to remain neutral."

I said, more slowly, "Not specifically you. Why isn't Internal Affairs handling it?"

Sam was stalled by some surprised thought.

"A member of the guard accused of murder? Hello?" Juvenile me, drowning witless.

"Cassie...God, all that time I figured maybe you knew."

I got grittier and a bit louder. "Knew _what_? For the last time, Sam, I haven't heard anything about Rob, unless I heard it from you."

"Rob quit about a month after Vestal."

I sat down slowly.

"He didn't just leave the squad, he resigned all the way out the door. He's no longer a cop. O'Kelly tried to bully IA into taking it, but it's a whole mess of bureaucracy..."

I got chills. I could see him toughing out the demotion blues with his head down for a pitiful run of time, but almost nobody ever just quits like that, not when it's the only real thing they've ever held down. There was something small but black and fearful in that new void of information: I had no idea, none at all, why he would do something like that.

"I actually..." Sam took a breath. "I wanted to tell you about it before, especially with how Rob was acting after he showed up again a few times at Murder. I couldn't know what to expect from him, cause you know, what could be normal for somebody after the month we all had. But he didn't do anything noticeable for about a week at least, and then...I started to pick up on things while he was supposed to be running the phones for one of Kennedy's cases. He was getting wrung out again and again, for neglecting the most basic things. Only in his own way, I think the gaffer was concerned; 'cause who would come back after screwing up as badly as he did and not be as much on top of things as possible, unless something was really wrong? And then some time soon after, I know there were days he just didn't show up. It got to be worse and worse, and then I heard that after not coming to work for an entire week he came in, looking totally awful, just to ask Kennedy to pass on his resignation."

Sometimes I wonder what I could have possibly felt, especially when Operation Vestal was that raw, if I had known about this earlier. Maybe not much different at all. All I could feel then was the most terrible sense of something evening out; I hadn't spent much time imagining what he was up to, but I'm just wicked enough that him contentedly getting on with his job and his life would have hurt a little bit more than hearing this. Only it was like a link that was still there, yanking smartly. In a sudden fierce rush, I had to talk to him.

It abated. Sam felt his way back into talking.

"The fact is I can believe, from what I saw, that there's something going on with him. The days when he hadn't quite dropped off the map, but seemed to be barely making it into work at all...That was the worst. I couldn't tell you what it was that had us all tensing up whenever he walked by, but...We would notice him ducking into the bathroom to be alone one too many times in a day, things like that, like he just wasn't dealing. I kept thinking he must have lost a close family member, something awful must have come up at the worst possible time, but nobody knew anything about it. We mostly pretended not to notice; he doesn't really have mates, it's not like he was talking much to anybody, so keeping a pace around him was all we could do."

I felt extremely restless and utterly tired, at the same time, while hearing this. I thought about getting up to do something at the stove, but I couldn't quite get my legs to move.

"The last week he was there, I saw him standing off to the side in the courtyard one morning, almost like he was hiding. I don't think he had any idea I saw him, and he was...he was shaking. Not like a bad fever shakes, but like...fear. Looking up at the sky like he was begging, praying for a handle on something...I don't know." A darkly rueful set to Sam's face before he said, "I almost went up to him and asked him if he was alright. It was that bad."

I wasn't sure I had a single thing left to say. The cigarette I'd mostly forgotten about was almost burned all the way down and leaning forward to place it in the ashtray felt too heavy and hard, that exhaustion gnawing even deeper.

As it turned out, Sam didn't really expect me to say anything else. I don't think either of us was capable of doing a casual night in, so he kissed me on the temple while I was still thinking about something, stood up and said he'd call me the next day, and left.

I jutted into consciousness well before my usual waking time, at some innocuous thud from downstairs. When I tried to make myself breakfast my grip failed me and I dropped an egg right on the floor. After cleaning it up I slid my back down the fridge door until I was sitting on the cold linoleum, just clenching my fists down at my sides for a while.

That was when I got the idea to go to the shooting range. I used to only go practice a couple times a year, but it suddenly struck me as a good way to tighten myself up, and the place stays open at the dim hours so I could easily go shoot for a while before showing up for work.

When I got there thirty minutes later there was a small crowd, but thankfully no one felt like saying hello. When I left later I did feel better, but there were some slips of the conversation from the people idling at the lockers that I knew from only a few words had something to do with what Sam had told me yesterday. I could feel the odd look in my direction; when one of them made a too-polite point of nodding at me when I glanced, I could only give him a blank wall on the way to the stairs.

Sam and I snapped back to our routine over the next couple days; if I seemed more on edge he didn't say anything about it. The case was grinding hard on everybody, absolutely everybody at Murder. At this point O'Kelly, in a bizarre turn that somehow set everyone even more on edge, was apparently being a lot more quiet lately, even almost nice. I could actually see how this made some sense: I'd never seen what he would be like when things got quite this ugly and there are only so many times you can march around demanding answers to why they hadn't caught this bastard yet when you've seen all the evidence yourself. But it would feel like the worst omen; you're taught to dread the moment when the storm starts to calm simply because there's no inspiration to be had.

Some day during the next week, I went out and bought my own car. I like the Vespa but it's admittedly old, and I'd been saving up for a while for the day it whimpered out for good; while it was running fine at the moment Sam had been dropping comments about how this was no time to have it break down in the wrong area.

If someone had asked me if I was afraid of our serial killer, I would have had no idea how to answer. That sounds a little unbelievable, but remember that my mental balance was off; for all I knew my system would have found something else to get equally jumpy over if there hadn't conveniently been a wacko out there taking out an assembly line for me to appear very sanely afraid of. I think there was a part of me that thought that I should just go through the motions—give the obligatory shudder to the endless conversations that went around the office about the news, keep to the well-lit areas, buy a boring new car—and my body would stop jolting at the things I had no reason to be nervous about.

At some point near the end of the week, I noticed the news channels were uttering Rob's name with the expected amount of sensationalizing about the cop's biggest lead so far, but someone was holding the reins on that info pretty tight, and there wasn't a word yet about his status as a former police officer. Obviously this would get out, but nobody in the entire force wanted or needed that headache just yet.

I tried to do the same thing about Rob that I'd always been doing—hardly ever letting my mind even blink on him—but he'd gone and wrapped himself in so much that didn't make any sense, and I could only try to tell myself it was that detective's curiosity that kept my thoughts flying back to what in the hell must have happened with him. Once it got to the point that he had to be out there somewhere, knowing he was a suspect and still failing to materialize from out of whatever shadow or dusty basement he was hiding in, it was like that feeling when you realize you can't remember the sound of somebody's voice anymore. I'd had only the vaguest idea of how to picture where he was or what he was doing before, but now that part of my mind was gradually going completely blank.

I made it through the rest of my work week and then all of the weekend, and then I had to do it.

I'd gotten off Monday and gone to the shop and I was on my way home when I caught sight of a payphone. My breathing was going tighter even as I thoughtlessly pulled over into the small lot of the pub just next to it. I got out, looking around for no particular reason, walking slowly over. I took my mobile out of my pocket.

I'd considered deleting the number several times, convinced that having it in the contacts was a precarious shortcut to have around in a drunk haze, but I hadn't. I took up the payphone's receiver and dialed, realizing as I did that I probably could have still taken Rob's number out of my memory.

I might have jumped out of my skin if there had been an answer, but of course it rolled straight to voicemail. I could only stand in the chill with my mouth hanging slightly open before I hit the receiver bed. The coins came clanking down. I took a deep breath and then let the switch back up and put the coins back in, dialed the number again.

"Detective Ryan. Please leave a message after the tone."

"Rob. It's me." Usually once I get talking I don't stammer out, but that was one of the many things I'd lost lately. I bit my lip and opened my mouth again. "I just want to say this crap isn't funny anymore, and you're too smart to be trying to run away from this shit. I don't know why I'm calling, but I just thought...maybe if there was anyone you'd want to explain yourself to, it would be me. And it would just be between you and me, unless...Just, get to a public phone and give me a ring, okay?...Damn it. You owe me. Bye."

I got out of the booth and sat down on the curb while the low traffic swished by. I sat there for almost an hour, doing nothing but smoking a few and nodding at the people who came out of the pub while my hand clutched around my mobile in my pocket. When I finally decided nothing was going to happen I stood up and went home.

What I had now started was one of the very good reasons I hadn't already tried phoning Rob a couple weeks before then. I could only lie back and stare up at my ceiling, feeling something low and sick hanging through the air. I was worried out of my mind.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will probably be the last update for a while. Thanks for the kudos so far.

I hit the shooting range again the next night, just needing to get out for a bit. I took out the moped for it, liking the idea of the breeze against my skin with how increasingly stifled and odd-smelling home felt, the longer I was hanging around in it by myself.

Sam seemed to be nailed to the office even later every night, and on my way out of shooting practice I liked the idea of bringing him something to eat; I'd been avoiding going back there but it was sounding more appealing than all the things my thoughts were shaping out of every little noise I heard at my gaff. I drove to a sandwich shop a few blocks from Dublin Castle and got him something homey and standard. I wasn't hungry, but I got enough for two anyway.

It was easy enough to walk right into headquarters, with Bernadette giving me nothing more than a nod of recognition, but as soon as I turned the handle to the main offices I heard and felt that low white noise of rumor before it had the chance to have anything to do with me. As I walked in my thoughts were muted with it, the measured voices you always hear but with something hissing, the talk fast around tight solemn rings of people. The place could have been all kinds of mental lately, stress-fracturing along its compact society in a way I had never been around to understand. I quickly clocked that Sam was nowhere to be seen.

Costello was the closest person I felt I could easily stand, and the fact that he didn't bother with a greeting the second he saw me should have been a warning. "Maddox," he said, his words stalled out and grave.

“Howya. Is Sam not around?" I asked quietly. "I'll just throw this in the fridge.”

One second or so, Costello carefully considering me, and then it was noticed, in an instant switch, that I was in the room: Half of everyone was glancing at me with that same look.

I looked back up at Costello. I set down the food bag.

He led me with a light touch on the shoulder back to the short hallway next to the jacks, then farther, where someone had dropped a lighter on their way to the outside stairwell. Obviously the idea was that we would be out of everyone's sight but I didn’t expect to follow him that far back. I didn't think it could possibly be (collapsing, crying, shouting, the usual squad housekeeping) that bad.

The entire place sounded much more quiet, that entire moment. I felt Costello's hand on my arm again and I may have looked up at him and nodded a couple times, I think he may have been trying to make sure whether I needed to sit down, but I don't remember. A part of me was taking the news as if it had been some good-natured tip-off, like it had nothing to do with me. I think I kept thanking him for some reason. I think, for those first minutes, I wasn't able to feel anything.

Later I marched on tingling legs out of the Garda section to where the gallery tourists had long gone home and the one security worker didn't interrupt me headed to the jacks in the silent stretch of the hall where the only bulb left on this late gave out a sickly yellow light. I walked into the last stall and kicked the door shut behind me, then for good measure kicked it harder, harder. It bounced and its hinges whined and the door swayed, cornering me, and I bit my teeth in the crook of my arm, bellowing a noise.

Someone had put a bullet in him. Someone had _killed_ my partner. I don't have any doubt: I had never been more sick with anger in my entire life. It's impossible to say how long I was in there. I'd sunken to the floor out close to the faucets and kept trying to get myself standing up, but I just kept slamming my hand against the sink top again and again, until I stopped visibly shaking.

When I did manage to pull myself together enough to go back in, somebody had done something with the sandwiches. I picked up my helmet by the strap and then stood there for a moment before realizing I wasn't leaving. Barely registering the stares, I went to the stairwell and up to where the interview rooms were, winding to the side with the windows to the observation rooms.

There is one interview room, carpeted and equipped with cushiony chairs and self-serve coffee, where we put some of the non-suspects or the types of suspects we’re playing nice with, grandmothers, confessors who “only just realized” their friend’s alibi didn’t hold up, and so on. Such as in Ted Limerick's case, occasionally it's where they put presumed self-defense killers.

On the relative scale of interviews, this one is a breeze; uniforms could do it without a hitch. All the boxes are checked or they're not. O'Kelly wouldn't usually care about observing, but it didn't surprise me that he was there. I saw him through the small door window first, facing the glass, and some floater in there was turned around just at the moment to notice me. She asked O'Kelly something with a furrowing brow. I could see the impatient brush-off of a response, but then he looked around through the window and saw me, and said something else to her. She came over and opened the door for me. I walked in without a word, set my helmet on the table, and went right over to the window.

Flaherty was interviewing. He was one of a handful of squad members I barely knew, but I could tell that his affected mildness was only put on in the consoling way as he talked to Ted Limerick.

Limerick, seemingly in mocking spite of the unusual name, wasn't remarkable-looking. Sort of tall, handsome in no striking way, his light brown hair just beginning to thin out. Usually people looked wrecked in here, one way or another; he didn't look good, but it seemed like he was still recovering from the fact that he was here at all.

"When you saw for sure that someone was in the living room, did you recognize that it was Ryan?" Flaherty was asking.

"Not...uh, not immediately. But it occurred to me, when I first heard the noise, that it might be him." The words had an affect on his face as they came out; he was keeping it together well, but he had to make the effort. "I shouted out to him that I was about to call the police and wanted him to leave. Then he said my name. I recognized his voice. I wish I had thought to turn the light on, but then I was just...I don't know, I was too freaked out."

"Did he say what he was there for?"

"I...don't know. I'm sorry."

The rookie had left the observation room. Next to me, O'Kelly tried to offer me one of his cigarettes. I shook my head without glancing away.

"It's the same as I said earlier," Limerick said. "I was shouting for him to get out, I probably shouted it a dozen times. And through all that he was saying something to me, I'm pretty sure, but I wasn't listening. I'm sorry. I was too scared."

"That's perfectly understandable," Flaherty said. "I just need to know if you have any idea what he wanted."

"No. Of course I panicked because...hell, I reported those things about him, and how do I know that couldn’t get back to him? And then he breaks into my house?"

The hesitation stretched until Flaherty prodded, “Take your time.”

Limerick was looking down. From that far he had long dark-shaded lashes. "I wish I could tell you for sure he sounded threatening, but I'm not sure he did...You said that didn't necessarily matter."

"Like I told you, it’s very optimistic that you will get let off for self-defense. In the cases of home invasions it rarely goes any other way, alright? We just need to look into what Ryan has been doing; I'm sure you understand why we'd like to know as much as you can remember."

"Right." Another deep, swallowing pause. "I don't know what he said or what he sounded like. That stuff will haunt me, I mean, I couldn't have known for sure what he's capable of or what he was about to do...Sometimes, this job, it’s like you end up being the closest thing to a priest for people who don’t go to priests. Maybe he just thought he needed to be caught. Needed to be stopped, and I could help him through it."

My arms had been crossed over myself in an aching tight knot for the last few minutes. My voice cracked through the silence of the observation room: "He had a license for that gun?"

O'Kelly was clockwork. “He lives well out of the city. He appealed for a single-shot two years back to keep predators off his chickens.”

I waited another moment, but I'd seen what I needed to see. As surely as I'd come in, I turned around and started heading out.

"Maddox," I heard behind me. I turned back, and O'Kelly was giving me a heavy inscrutable look just before he eyed the helmet. He asked, "Are you alright to get yourself home?"

I felt like I was dangling off the ceiling, my legs too weak to be holding me up, and O'Kelly's small note of compassion was too eerie and disarming on top of it all. "I'm fine," I said, and got out of there, back through the main exit where almost everyone had gone for the night.

I told it to myself again and again. Rob was not there for me through the end of Operation Vestal, and he wasn't there when I handed Rosalind a couple parts of me to feast on, and he wasn't there when I had to go to England and when he'd still been alive, as far as I'd been concerned, I couldn't trust him like I once had; the contract had been ripped up. None of it seemed to matter anymore. I thought for sure that from the highest innocent rung of our days to the downhill slope where the weight of his life had collided painfully into mine and left both of us spinning and bruising in opposite directions, through every betrayal I'd taken as a whole language lost to a maddening silence and all the nights I spent furiously asking the whys, I should have known, I should have seen this thing coming from far, far away, when I was still there to watch for it. I should have gone searching for him, through the city, through the branches and fog, following him through to the places where we both would have sworn he'd never go, and then brought him back home.

I took the long meandering way back to my flat, rumbling across the roads and feeling the snapping chill of the wind on my face, and I couldn't stop wondering how in the hell I had allowed any of this to happen.

When the knock came at my door that night I didn't have to wonder who it was. If I'd been thinking right I might have been wondering why it was Sam hadn't rang me, but it didn’t matter.

When I opened the door, we just looked at each other for a moment, as lifeless and failed as ghosts on a war ground. Finally I only nodded, and he came inside and put his arms around me. I barely felt him.

“I want to see the body,” I said, when I finally felt like I could talk.

I’d pulled down the futon and was lying down facing the wall and the windows, but without seeing Sam at the moment I sensed an immediate tension, a crack in his breathing.

He said, ”So you don’t know that part.”

Christ, what next? What mattered?

I slowly sat back up, rubbing at my eyes.

Sam winced into the mug of coffee and whiskey that we’d started sharing at some point, looking like he'd give up a foot for there to not be even more to this I had to process. He set the drink down. "Cassie, the body's missing."

"No," I said, picturing a mix-up at the hospital, somebody making a temporary blunder and Sam using this to smooth over something he didn't think was a good idea. "No, the body isn't missing. I need to see it, alright, I can't wait until whatever funeral there's going to be, I need to see him and realize this is all real and get all that closure and shite so I can just...What are you _on_ about?"

"The body," he said slowly, "has _disappeared_. Me and half the lads have been charging around the neighborhood getting warrants registered for the boot of every car nearby, because there was nobody in the room with it for about two minutes and now it's gone."

I looked back at him as somebody was yelling at their dog down outside, the world spinning on indifferently. There was no color in the room, no warmth anywhere.

"What's more, there were enough cops standing round the house that one of us should have seen somebody leaving; if it was a brisk enough making off, that'd be another story, but hauling up a grown body is hardly just a duck around the corner. We're out of our heads here. It’s like he vanished into thin air, that's what it's like."

For an insane second I heard the wood and the wind cracking, the endless depths of trees and had the briefest strangely comforting image, a disappearing act in the same bright flight with little Peter and Jamie, his reach expired but not ending alone. I blinked that crazy sting away. "What the _hell_? Had the death been confirmed by Cooper or anyone...?"

"No, which is just lovely," Sam said, his voice unusually steely. He opened his mouth and then stalled, faltered, before adding in an almost pained way, "I...felt his pulse, but. That doesn't mean anything officially. What with the idea we've got serial killers on the police squads, everyone's going to throw around the idea we somehow let him get away. By incompetence or even worse."

"But he was dead." It probably sounded slow; my head was barely keeping up. I was still stuck on imagining Sam getting sight of that body, what would make him lean down to check; that's not our job, that's never necessary. But like fuck I could claim I wouldn't have done the same for someone who was half what Rob was to me, for the same reason I needed to see the brunt of this disaster for myself.

"Right. I'm just saying with the media storm, people will say anything...I'd been driving around trying to spot anybody looking suspicious; finally they put a few floaters on that but the situation is so bizarre O'Kelly's not excited about leaving it to them." He sighed. "Sorry, I've got to use the toilet."

"'Course," I said, standing up with him. "Here, give me your coat. You look like you're on your way back out."

He gave a glance then that made me wonder if he'd actually been waiting for me to tell him if I wanted to be alone; I wasn't sure one way or the other about what I needed. It didn't seem like anything would make a difference. I folded his coat over my arm and carried it to the chair back I've thrown it on since the rack got itself a broken leg.

I didn't end up asking him to stay over. We sat watching something on TV for a while, hardly saying anything. He held my hand very loosely and I occasionally thought to give it a grateful squeeze.

When he was finally leaving it was so late it was almost early. I'd been falling with cowardly comfort into the feel of it being like any other night, firmly ignoring the growl of ugliness that threatened to gnaw on my mind; it took me unprepared when Sam was on his way out and then stopped, turning back to me. He said, "There's something I want to tell you."

I dug my hands into the pockets of my sweater."...What?"

"Rosalind Devlin," he said, and it was definitely not what I expected him to be getting at, especially with the surreal fact that the name didn't quite have the burning effect on the air it had once had, not on that day. Sam wasn't sure how to do this. "You know he never said a lot of those things she said he did? About you?”

And suddenly the memory was just as much an unwelcome breath as a person who shouldn't have been standing over my shoulder, an eye on me with unblinking animal nerve.

For whatever reason, my recollection had never gotten used to the idea that both Sam and Rob had been in that van for the whole sick waste. Maybe that wasn't even the part that mattered. Maybe Sam, with his simpler grudge against Rob, had still been able to see a clear truth I just couldn't trust anymore.

The realization was something else too: He'd been half-expecting Rob to come back to me somehow. The possibility had never even occurred to me.

"It doesn't matter now," was all I could say, after a moment. "He's gone."

Sam held me tight, and then he left.

I sat huddled in next to my window, and a couple hours into the cold stillness of night turning to dawn I was still sitting there, thinking.

It was strange, being responsible for arranging myself into what seemed like an appropriate reaction to all of this. It seemed like there should have been some precedent, but I came up blank; after I got stabbed there had been only a couple people who really needed to know, and when I didn't feel the urge to talk about it we all bore the bad luck with small talk over wine and casseroles. I didn't know where to begin with this one, but I could hardly go around pretending to be fine, not anymore.

My type of trust has no concept of the passing of time; you're either initiated or you're not, which I realize is probably not one of my wiser qualities. I have girlfriends I've known since before I went to Templemore, but I couldn't envision how they would react if I suddenly rang them about something much more serious than meeting up for drinks; we'd never gotten past much of anything more personal than the congratulatory teasing when one of us had been getting laid. I'd known Rob for less than a couple hours when I was showing him my undercover scars, less than a couple months before I once got slightly wistful about an ex in front of him; shortly before the end I'd been telling him things I never thought I'd ever tell anyone.

With Sam, I was trying. It was easy to open up to him, though it took conscious thought to do it, like it would never be reflex. But I'd been trying, in no small part because the thought of losing him made me feel something desolate and almost terrified.

It seemed unthinkable, that for the man who had taken my rarest purest form of trust and thrown it into the gutter I would take the man who would never do anything to hurt me and twist on that love until it took me back to somewhere I shouldn't and couldn't be. It would be just about the stupidest thing I could possibly do. But I opened my hand and it was still there, I was still holding the incident room key that I'd taken out of Sam's coat pocket, and I was too busy turning it over and over in my mind to get to sleep.


End file.
